The Austin weekly statesman. (Austin, Tex.) 1883-1898, 1887-06-09
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.
Publicity should be given to state
ment made by Mr.. Evans in closing fol-
the prosecution in murder case IN oul
courts last week. He said over hundred
murders had been committed in Travis
County in the last twenty years, and yet
in all that time, not a single gallows mao
been erected or used. Is that statement
true! Or, if true, how has it haPPeheu'
Were all these murders of degree less
than first? Or, if of the first degree Is
our county made up of jurymen believing
only in imprisonment and not capi'ai
pupishment? The laws governing the Sc
lection of juries in criminal cases,make ~
impossible for man having conscien-
tious scruples against inficting capital
punishment to be accepted as Juror
Imprisonment penalties have then,
in these cases, been inflicted
either because the jurors thought
the crimes we're murder OF the second de-
gree, or because though of the first degree
vet precedent and unbroken custom hadhx-
ed life i'm prisOnment rather than the death
penalty as the proper expiration for the
crimes. Such a custom is opposed to the
shirt of the law, and is exceedingly in
iurious in its results. Capital punish
mept. as now understood in the courts, IL
q penalty wise in its severity, ana wise be-
cause of its severity. This is especially
true in this day of great liberality in the
granting of pardons. Laws are respected
and feared as you establish the inexora-
BILE character of the penalties for their
violation. Bring home to the criminally
inclined the conviction, that punishment
inevitably will follow the commission
of crime, and you in nine cases out OF
ten deter from the act. We do not
agree with the Express when
it said Sunday, changing breeds capital
crime. Verdicts breed verdicts." Then
an Imprisonment penalty breeds crime
and so far from attempting to enforce
laws, the country would be benefited by
annulling all law. We do not think chang
ing breeds capital crime" but the failure
to hang, when the public sense of justice
is thoroughly convinced that hanging is
the right punishment to be inflicted. The
public, it is true, do not always judge cor
rectly about such grave matters, and their
decision should not alb initio be referred to
such tribunal; but when the public, from
whom the juries are chosen, through long |
see imprisonment penalties assessed when
the death sentence should have been
passed, and then later see these same
guilty ones whitewashed with pardon and
returned to citizepship-we say it is the
failure to hang that breeds capital crime.
It is not meant to be severe on the crimi-
nal but it is our wish to change the cur
rent of sentiment and be solicitOus for
society and government, not for the Grim
inal. The criminal has put himself with
out the pale of society, and while mercy
is a beautiful virtue 1t should temper, not
defeat justice. Society is consideration
over and above the criminal and his fate,
and this fate in capital cases was made
the severest known to the law, that society
in this matter of personal safety might be
the most vigorously protected. 1t is not the
duty of . jury to be more mindful of the
accused and the man they adjudge guilty
has prescribed death penalty in certain
instances, the enforcement of that law
would prove its wisdom and efficacy.